February 25, 2004

SOME LOVELY PICTURES of the Smoky Mountains in February, by Matthew Cromer. I nearly drove up there today, but decided that I had too much to do and stayed home to work. Obviously, I was an idiot, with this sort of thing 30 minutes from my door.

Let this be a lesson to me. . . .

UPDATE: I noticed that Matthew uses a Sony DSC-F828 digital camera, which I’ve heard mixed reports about (the problem is noise and chromatic aberration in low-light settings). I asked him about his experience and he replied:

I’m pretty happy with the 828. It does have one major flaw which is a tendency to purple fringing in some lighting conditions It’s pretty easy to deal with for an advanced photoshop user, but annoying. . . .

The reason I got the 828 is because I shoot mostly landscape images and need as much resolution as I can get, and because I like composing with the LCD on the back. The LCD will pivot up and down which is very nice for shots taken overhead or close to the ground. It’s also nice (to me) to be able to take pictures with the camera off my face. You can’t do that with an SLR because none of them (today anyway) have live LCDs. I also shoot video of the kids which is very nice.

I love the ability to shoot high-quality video with sound. But since I often shoot indoors or in poor light, I don’t think this one’s for me. He’s sure done some first-rate work with it, though.